


When It All Breaks

by Theoroark



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 18:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18349403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theoroark/pseuds/Theoroark
Summary: Baptiste finds a very sick Genji Shimada and takes him back to his clinic. Genji doesn't want him to find out who he is.Baptiste knows.





	When It All Breaks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloomingcnidarians](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloomingcnidarians/gifts).



There were certain moments in Genji’s life, ever since that had been given back to him, where he had to step back and examine how hard he was working to keep living and reflect on how thoughtless and stupid it all was.   
  
Like now, for instance. It was a rainy season and his armor hadn’t been dry in probably a solid week now. He scraped the algae that had grown in the crannies out with his nails and wrapped the pieces he could afford to remove up in towels when he slept. He stayed in his hostel room as much as he could, as though he could afford to wait out nature. It didn’t matter. His skin burned at the joints and there was sharp pain when the metal dug into it. He stunk. Angela had told him, when he left, that as long as he did basic maintenance he would do fine on his own. He hadn’t. And that was the funniest thing, wasn’t it. He would do nothing as he was swept out to sea and then when he couldn’t see the shore, then he would start to panic and fight the riptide. It wasn’t that he wanted to die. It was that he didn’t want to put in the effort he needed to to live, and so he procrastinated like his immune system was a fucking high school math test.   
  
Hanzo had always told him he was lazy.   
  
The manager had been watching him and whispering, so Genji left before he could be thrown out. He took a towel with him. It smelled so bad he imagined the hostel would have just burned the thing, anyway. He found a building where the corrugated metal roof jutted out enough that he could lie underneath it– not much, when the wind blew the rain into the sliver of cover anyway, but something. He lay the towel down and sighed when it immediately started to darken. It was something.   
  
And he was so, so tired. He had been swimming for so long. He just wanted to sleep.   
  
He lay down on the damp towel and closed his eyes.   
  
\-   
  
Baptiste hadn’t been particularly keyed in to the intel side of Talon– a fact Sombra had made sure to make fun of him for, when he finally had his epiphany. But he knew Overwatch. Everyone knew Overwatch. And, particularly after the death of Captain Amari, everyone knew Talon and Overwatch were bitter enemies.   
  
Baptiste was most worried about Talon. But there were few people in the world he trusted. And so while he thought he recognized the body in the alley behind the bar, he wanted to confirm with one of those trusted few first.   
  
“Yup,” Sombra said, staring down at the stinking mass of metal and flesh. “That’s definitely Genji Shimada.” And then she took a sip of her drink, like there wasn’t a hypercompetent assassin at their feet, and like the two of them weren’t almost certainly on his hit list.   
  
Though he didn’t seem much for murder, at the moment. Even in the tropical climate, he was shivering, curled in on himself. In the gaps of his armor– which there were far too many of, Baptiste noted, some of the pieces were unsecured or incorrectly moored– there were glimpses of pus and discolored skin.   
  
“He’s sick.”   
  
“Wow. You really are a medic.” Baptiste rolled his eyes, and Sombra grinned, then finished her drink and dumped the ice in the overflowing gutter. Baptiste wasn’t even sure why the bartender had let her bring her glass out here.   
  
“So,” she said. “What’re you going to do about it, though?”   
  
Even after knowing her for years, Sombra’s presumptuousness still got to him sometimes. She didn’t know everything, much as she liked to act like she did. He had seen the fear on her face, just for a second before she hid it, when he told her he was leaving. She had calmed down a bit after he had called her a couple times, but Baptiste knew things she didn’t. And so when Sombra just assumed he wasn’t going to let Genji be, even though he was in no immediate danger, even though doing so could very well mean putting himself in danger– when she made leaps like that, and was so confident in them, it rankled sometimes. Because Baptiste liked to think he wasn’t as predictable as that.   
  
It mainly rankled because she was right.   
  
“Come on,” he said. “My clinic’s a couple blocks away. I’ll need your help to carry him.”   
  
“He smells like shit,” Sombra muttered, but she set her drink down and helped Baptiste heft Genji up. He gurgled a little as he woke, and Baptiste saw Sombra's cybernetics glow under the skin of her wrist, prepared to incapacitate the cyborg. But Genji's arm was slack around Baptiste, and his movements were slow. Baptiste held up a hand, and Sombra let the light fade. Genji looked between them.   
  
“Who–?”   
  
“Aide workers,” Baptiste said quickly. “I’m taking you to my clinic. No charge.” The last part fell out of his mouth automatically, part of his standard reassurance to recalcitrant clients, but it seemed to soothe Shimada as well. Baptiste looked over his head at Sombra, but she seemed more focused on keeping her footing, and grumbling about the mud on her shoes. He'd have to ask her what had happened to Genji later.   
  
Right now, he had a job to do.   
  
\-   
  
When Genji woke he was dry, lying on a cot, and his armor was gone. All of it. The room around him– white tiled floor, perforated white ceiling– was all filtered through a golden light and for the second time in his life, Genji briefly wondered if he had died and gone to heaven.   
  
The person that turned to greet him at least had the decency not to wear angel wings this time. If Genji had been twenty years old and horny again, he would have said something about the man looking good enough to be an angel, anyway. As it was, he was more concerned as to why he wasn't dead, when his artificial spinal cord was gone.   
  
"Immortality field," the man said, tapping a drone that hovered in the middle of the room. It was casting the golden light about like a disco ball. "There was mold on all your cybernetics. We had to do a deep clean to get it all out. This will keep you in stasis while we get your essential components cleared."   
  
The man dipped out of the field, and came back with a cart. Genji's spinal cord was on it, along with the black and red bare bones of his limbs. The man lifted Genji off his back and Genji was suddenly aware of just how much of him was gone, how little he was without his cybernetics. The man could hold him up with one hand as he reattached Genji's spine with the other.   
  
"Send a thank you card to whoever designed this for me," the man said. "It's an incredibly intuitive design, for something so advanced."   
  
Genji jolted, partially at the shock of nerve endings coming back to life, partially because he remembered who designed it. "Ah. Yes. I had a friend get me into a clinical trial."   
  
The man's head was down now, reattaching his legs, and so Genji couldn't see how his lie had fared. "I'm Haru," he said.   
  
"Haru," the man stood to reattach his arms and flashed Genji such a bright smile, Genji couldn't help but smile back. "I'm Baptiste."   


Baptiste took his hand off Genji’s back and after swaying, disoriented, for a moment, Genji found he could hold himself upright. He swung his legs over the bed, only for Baptiste to grab him once more. Genji may not have been twenty and horny again, but he also wasn’t dead, and so he couldn’t not notice Baptiste’s bicep flex has he held him, gently but firmly, on the bed.

 

“Even with your advanced cybernetics, you still need time to recalibrate,” he said. “And you certainly can’t leave now, if that’s what you were thinking. We’re still cleaning the rest of your components, and I want to monitor your infected tissue for a bit.”

 

Genji nodded and sank back into the cot. Baptiste smiled down at him, almost as brilliant as the drone’s light. “Don’t look so glum about it, now. I only have a couple other patients here. I can keep you company, no problem.”

 

Genji nodded again and realized, in a deeply disorienting moment, that Baptiste could see him smiling back. Or attempting to. But Baptiste didn’t seem bothered by the warping scar tissue and toothless gums. He just got back to work, chattering to Genji about just how badly he had fucked himself up, if you had just wiped the outer parts down like once a week, Haru…

 

Genji was lying there, more physically exposed than he had let himself be in years, and more comfortable than he had been in a long, long time.

  
\-   
  
Sombra just snorted when Baptiste filled her in, that night at the bar. “He and his brother are both kind of fuckups,” she said. “I don’t blame him for not wanting to own up.”

 

“But he was with Overwatch, right? I remember hearing his name being thrown around when Ogundimu was arrested.”

 

“He WAS Blackwatch, yeah,” Sombra said. “But I’ve been keeping an eye on ex-Blackwatch and like– the ones who didn’t come to us, it’s all pretty shitty, but he’s definitely one of the shittiest.” The bartender came by with Sombra’s rum and coke and Baptiste’s margarita and despite Baptiste’s glare, Sombra did not stop her report in the stranger’s presence. “It took me forever to even find anything on him, because he’s really just been doing fuck-all. All I could get were security stills of him in dives and slums.”

 

“Like here.”

 

“And that bar we met up at in Dorado. I’m talking shit about him, not dives and slums.”

 

Baptiste laughed and took a sip of his drink. “Should I tell him I know?” he asked. Sombra thought about that one for a minute, eyeing him up and down.

 

“Why didn’t you, before?” she finally asked. “It’s not like he could have taken you out when he was just a torso.”

 

“I wasn’t going to leave him as a torso.”

 

“Yeah, but you could have taken precautions,” Sombra pointed out. “But you’d know better than me. Did you not tell him because you were afraid?”

 

Baptiste didn’t respond, moved the straw around the glass and looked at Sombra’s file on Shimada. “His brother killed him,” he said. “We can’t judge him for having a rough time of things after that, can we now?”

 

“Baptiste. We are both card carrying orphans. We very much can judge him.”

 

“He’s an orphan too.”

 

“His mother died when he was an infant and his father died of a heart attack when he was in his late sixties. It’s not quite the same as war or famine.”

 

Baptiste shrugged. “Dead is dead.”

 

Sombra opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. When she spoke, it was a different tack. "You could blackmail him or something, I bet. He seems pretty desperate."  
  
"I'm not going to blackmail him. And neither are you," he added quickly, and Sombra scowled.

 

“So what are you doing here then? Just treating him and sending him on his way?”

 

“This may shock you, but that’s actually standard operating procedure at most clinics.” Sombra snorted despite herself and Baptiste sipped his drink. “And anyway. I’d have thought you of all people would understand the advantages of having an ex-Overwatch assassin as a friend.”

 

A smile curved on Sombra’s lips. “You like him,” she said. Baptiste just drank because he had already admitted Sombra was right once this week. He didn’t owe her a second.

 

-

 

As he had left that first night, Baptiste had left Genji with an old holovid, just some basic communication capabilities, three mediocre comedies, and local news channels. It kept him entertained at night but during the day, Genji was more than content to let the news babble in the background and focus on Baptiste. He was a quiet kind of charming that Genji, who had relied on flash to flirt for most of his life, couldn’t quite place. He would just make some sharp observation, some dry joke, and Genji would be laughing or enthralled and always would be left wanting to impress him, make Baptiste like him as much as Genji liked Baptiste.

 

It was hard when he wasn’t Genji, he was Haru. But there were stories from before the fight he could trot out, and those seemed to make Baptiste laugh too. If Baptiste thought Haru was a frivolous rich kid who had partied his way to destitution, well. It meant that Baptiste wasn’t afraid of him. And that was refreshing.

 

Baptiste cared for him, methodically, gently. He cleaned Genji’s wounds and informed him of his treatment’s progress in a conversational, soothing tone. As soon as a cybernetic piece was disinfected, he would return to Genji, and soon he moved the ones he was still working on into the room as well. Genji assumed Baptiste had seen his relief at being able to lay eyes on his body. And despite his warning that first day, Baptiste seemed to trust that Genji would not leave. Genji hoped desperately this was because he seemed like the trustworthy sort, not because Baptiste had seen that Genji did not want to leave.

 

He wasn’t trustworthy though, Genji reminded himself. He was lying to Baptiste.

 

One day, when Genji’s armor was completely disinfected, when his wounds were almost fully healed, Baptiste brought him a beer. “Didn’t know what you liked,” Baptiste said, and Genji just smiled and thanked him and didn’t make fun of the hard lemonade he had brought for himself. Baptiste sat in the chair next to Genji’s cot and they watched soccer together on the tiny holovid projection.

 

“You’ll be discharged soon,” Baptiste said, after a while. Genji shifted.

 

“I know.”

 

“You won’t be my patient anymore.”

 

“I know.”

 

“So that mean I can ask you out, soon.” Genji stared at him stupidly, and the smile Baptiste gave him wasn’t as brilliant as all his other ones, was smaller, tentative. “If you want, that is,” he added.

 

“I can’t,” Genji said. Baptiste’s smile was gone, just like that, and he nodded and stood up. “Not because I don’t want to,” Genji said, before Baptiste could excuse him. “I’m just…”

 

Baptiste waited for him to finish his sentence and when it was clear he wasn’t going to, he picked the holovid off Genji’s lap. When he set it back down, it was projecting an image of a younger Baptiste, longer hair but same smile, with his arm wrapped around a woman with long braids. Both were wearing Talon uniforms.

 

“Esther,” Baptiste said quietly. “She’s still in there. I tried to convince her to come with me when I left, but she said she wouldn’t survive their retribution. And after everything they’ve put me through–” He laughed quietly, bitterly, “–I can’t say I blame her.”

 

“You know who I am,” Genji said. Baptiste nodded. “You knew the whole time.” Nodded again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Baptiste said. “I wasn’t sure at first. I don’t think it was because I was afraid of you– no offense, but it’s kind of hard to be scared of a guy who can’t take some baby wipes to his armor once a week.”

 

“Understandable,” Genji said, and the corner of Baptiste’s mouth quirked up.

 

“I think what I realized,” he said. “And why I showed you that is– I got why you lied. My past is much better than yours, but still. I can see why you’d want to leave it behind, even if it was just for a week.”

 

“Is this the part where you tell me my past doesn’t matter?”

 

“You’re the one lying here, not me.” Genji snorted and Baptiste smiled down at him and took his hand. “Of course the past matters. I don’t know what you did, but I know there are kids out there who don’t have parents anymore, because of the work I did for Talon.” Baptiste started to take his hand away but Genji stopped him. Baptiste’s whole arm went slack as he avoided Genji’s eyes. “The past matters, but who we are now does too. And I’m trying to be someone good now.”

 

“I’m not,” Genji said. “I’m not doing anything.”

 

“But you’re doing something different,” Baptiste said. “And I… I understand that. And I respect that.”

 

Genji felt his eyes getting hot and it was humiliating, Baptiste was looking right at him, there was nowhere to hide. “Thanks,” he said quietly. Baptiste nodded and cleared his throat.

 

“I was going to tell you I knew before I actually asked you out, you know.”

 

Genji blinked. He could feel his ugly smile growing and now Baptiste was the one who couldn’t meet his eyes. “This is the most effort someone’s put into asking me to reconsider, I think,” he said, and Baptiste covered his face with his hands.

 

“It wasn’t– there was no good way for me to do this, was there?”

 

“Probably not. So why bother?”

 

“Because I spent a week hearing who you wish you were,” Baptiste said. “And that was fun, don’t get me wrong. But I want to get to know you, too.”

 

Genji wasn’t twenty and horny anymore. He wasn’t a wealthy trust fund criminal anymore, he wasn’t a Blackwatch assassin anymore, he wasn’t much of anything anymore. He couldn’t think of a thing that would endear Baptiste to him.

 

But he trusted Baptiste and Baptiste wanted to get to know him. And he wasn’t dead, and this was one of the parts of living he knew was worth the effort. So he leaned up and kissed Baptiste.

**Author's Note:**

> For Blooming, inspired by our convos and her amazing art- [follow her on twitter](https://twitter.com/bloomingjellies) if you aren't already you fools, you imbeciles,
> 
> I'm [@tacticalgrandma](https://twitter.com/tacticalgrandma) on twitter if you want to talk to me there!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and any comments/kudos would mean the world to me <3


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